On Tue, 17 Dec 2013 07:42:01 -0500, Jerry Stuckle
wrote:

Actually, if you have the right equipment, you can narrow it down in a
very short time.

What is the right equipment? A portable spectrum analyzer is not in
my budget and my bench test equipment is too heavy for sniffing in the
field. I'm fairly well equipped for 2.4GHz wi-fi interference, but
not for HF.

It seldom takes us more than an hour to find RFI
problems, and most can be done in 10-15 minutes. It never takes us
days, even in large installations.

Impressive. I assume those are continuously generating RFI sources,
not sources that appear intermittently or drift all over the place as
they warm up. I spent about a month chasing down a noise source that
turned out to be the 24v battery charger on a diesel generator. Some
grid tied solar controllers seem to be problems and take some time to
find because they can be miles away. Fortunately, they're usually
easily fixed with the manufacturers optional filter kit. It took me
about a week to determine that my weather station was the source of
some 20 meter trash. The problem was that it only generated noise
when running on the internal backup battery, and not on AC power. The
ones that disappear when the AC power is temporarily turned off are
usually quite easy. The one's that don't take me much longer to find.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558